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Many of us have a love-hate relationship withplanks.

woman sweating in the gym

But we often hate actuallyholding planks for longerthan a few seconds because, well, theyre hard!

Maybe I give up prematurely when my abs start quaking.

I am also, admittedly, a little jealous.

Woman walking on a treadmill at the gym.

on day 30 by adding just 10 seconds per day, I decided to give it a shot.

Here is the schedule:

So, what was it like?

The challenge waswayharder, yet way more gratifying than I thought it would be.

Full body female athlete in sportswear using rowing machine during fitness workout in gym.

It started easily enough.

I cruised through the first few days, underwhelmed.

Ten, 20, even 30 seconds?

Happy woman dancing and listening to music near a green empty wall outdoor in the city.

Sure, I got this.

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But things quickly ramped up.

By days four and five, the challenge started to test my limits.

A young black woman doing post-run stretches in the park on the road amidst green grass and trees.

(Planking beginners, you know what Im talking about!)

And they werent just physically difficult.

I didnt want my mind to be the limiting factor that kept me from completing the challenge.

Playing the games made the time gosomuch faster.

I was a lot shakier, and I was definitely sore the next day at first.

But suddenly, I didnt mind hovering on my forearms for three minutes.

I started actually looking forward to doing my planks.

Though I know that the mental difficulty is part of the plank challenge, too.

Even better: I havent stopped.

Its been three days since the official end of the challenge and Im still adding more seconds every day.

Hey, maybe Ill get to 10 minutes by the end of January!

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